The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has published its analysis of social landlords’ first year of Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) results, as well as the results of its National Tenant Survey.

The TSMs are designed to help tenants hold their landlord to account in important areas, including their repairs service, maintenance of homes and complaint handling. They are a set of questions that landlords need to ask tenants about their service, and management information data collected by landlords about the delivery of key services.

The key findings are:

• The biggest driver for overall satisfaction is a tenant’s view of their landlord’s repairs service and how well their home is maintained – both of which relate to the requirements in RSH’s consumer standards. 
• Most social housing tenants (over 70%) are satisfied with their landlord’s service, feel their home is safe and well maintained, and that their landlord treats them with fairness and respect.
• However, there is still room for improvement across the sector, with around one in five tenants not satisfied with their landlord’s service, and only one third of affected tenants satisfied with the way their landlord handles complaints.
• Shared owners are less satisfied than other social housing tenants across a range of issues, with around 50% satisfied with their landlord’s overall service.

Through the management information TSMs, most landlords report that they have completed the required health and safety checks – including fire, gas, asbestos, lift and water safety. They have also reported that the majority of tenants live in homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard.

Fiona MacGregor, chief executive at RSH, said: “The TSMs enable tenants to scrutinise their landlord’s performance and hold them to account on a number of important issues. Landlords should already be reflecting on their results and using them to improve their services. 

“We are rolling out our new approach through planned inspections, investigations and scrutinising a range of information from landlords. Through our work, we are continuing to drive landlords to improve tenants’ homes and services.

“RSH is following up with landlords whose TSM results indicate they are outliers – including on health and safety indicators. RSH is also engaging with landlords where it has concerns about the quality of their data.”